Tag: Crowdfunding

This Monday, 14 days early, we have crossed a historic milestone. By helping us reach our $1.5M goal early, you have secured your future and freed yourself from the chains of privacy-stripping mobile platforms and allowed us to continue upholding your digital rights with a convenient product made “by the people and for the people”; you have proven that there is a market demand for in-depth security & privacy-focused smartphones that can withstand the test of credibility, by virtue of true community ownership and auditability of the code.

With this milestone comes not only rejoicing about our collective achievement (and the potential of an even greater achievement in weeks to come, as contributions continue to add-up), but also the assurance that the Librem 5 phone project, as a product, will happen. The dreams of a generation will finally come to reality with a convenient smartphone hardware offering that you can truly own and control.

The $1.5 million milestone allows us to do a couple of things as it relates to the production of the physical product:

Immediately resume negotiations with component suppliers, with a much stronger hand (with money on the table to enter contractual relationships)

Produce more complete prototypes to evaluate, in order to begin development now

Move into hardware production as soon as possible, for the development kit

Begin developing the base software platform with the help of the community (fully in the open, upstream-first approach) to bring the product’s software to first stage “usable state” for early adopters.

Move into hardware production for finalized hardware products, begin order fulfillment for those who want their devices early (and are ready to help us smooth out the rough edges from the software side, in the beginning).

This will also allow us to seek additional partnerships and investment in parallel to amplify and speed-up our project.

…let’s go above and beyond: to stretch goals!

The goals above already represent a groundbreaking step for users around the world who have been clamoring—for years—for a mobile platform they can truly trust and own. But it’s only the beginning! As we are writing this, we are already at $1.6 million and counting, but we need to push further to accomplish more.

Indeed, to make this hardware product an even more compelling offer beyond early-adopters, we should go beyond the “base platform” and make it into an “awesome user experience”, as much as possible. This is something we hope to achieve by reaching a number of stretch goals in this campaign:

$4m = VoIP phone number, call-in, call-out features: what this means is that we need to reach the $4 million milestone to hire the Matrix team to implement calls to/from the POTS/PSTN, to complement the existing VoIP features.

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., October 9, 2017 — Purism, the social purpose corporation which designs and produces popular privacy conscious hardware and software, has reached its $1.5 million crowdfunding goal to create the world’s first encrypted, open smartphone ecosystem that gives users complete device control, the Librem 5. After amassing incredible support from GNU/Linux enthusiasts and the Free/Open-Source community at large, forging partnerships with KDE and the GNOME Foundation in the process, Purism plans to use the remaining two weeks of the campaign to push for its stretch goals and start working on the next steps for bringing the phone to market.

Reaching the $1.5 million milestone weeks ahead of schedule enables Purism to accelerate the production of the physical product. The company plans to move into hardware production as soon as possible to assemble a developer kit as well as initiate building the base software platform, which will be publicly available and open to the developer community.

Breaking away from the iOS/Android OS duopoly, the Librem 5’s isolation-based security-focused PureOS will offer basic communication services: phone, email, messaging, voice, camera, browsing, and will expand after shipment and over time to update with more free software applications, through shared collaboration with the developer community (not “read-only open source”, but true free software collaboration). In addition to the ability to integrate with both GNOME and Plasma Mobile, the $599 Librem 5 will come equipped with hardware kill switches, a popular feature in Purism’s laptops, that allow for users to turn on and off the camera, microphone, WiFi and Bluetooth at will.

“We are thrilled that the community has supported us in making this goal a reality, and now comes the real work of bringing the Librem 5 to production and into the hands of our backers,” says Todd Weaver, Founder and CEO, Purism. “We believe we’ve demonstrated a growing interest in technologies that proactively protect and secure our digital identities, and are proud to be a part of catalyzing this movement.”

The impressive milestone has already generated celebration in the community:

About Purism

Purism is a Social Purpose Corporation devoted to bringing security, privacy, software freedom, and digital independence to everyone’s personal computing experience.
With operations based in San Francisco (California) and around the world, Purism manufactures premium-quality laptops, tablets and phones, creating beautiful and powerful devices meant to protect users’ digital lives without requiring a compromise on ease of use. Purism designs and assembles its hardware in the United States, carefully selecting internationally sourced components to be privacy-respecting and fully Free-Software-compliant. Security and privacy-centric features come built-in with every product Purism makes, making security and privacy the simpler, logical choice for individuals and businesses.

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., October 4, 2017 — As overwhelming support continues to pour in from the people wanting to have an ethical mobile phone that avoids Google Android and Apple iOS, Purism, the manufacturer that builds high-quality, top of the range and freedom-respecting devices, earlier today surpassed the $1 million milestone in their current crowdfunding campaign which will allow the company to build the Librem 5: the first truly privacy and security focused smartphone that has been endorsed by Matrix.org, KDE and the GNOME Foundation.

Purism, no stranger to successful crowdfunding campaigns, has built and established a strong reputation from programmers, security experts, and people wanting to protect their digital life by delivering on their promise to manufacture and distribute high-end privacy and security focused laptops that are the most secure high-end current computing devices on the market today. Crowdfunded campaigns for the Librem 15 and Librem 13 laptops in 2015 both doubled their funding goals and was delivered to backers. Reception and demand for both laptops fueled Purism to manufacture more units which were made accessible for General Availability earlier this summer.

One of the more popular features from the Librem 15 and Librem 13 that will be included in the $599 Librem 5 is the hardware kill switches that allow users to turn on and off the camera, microphone, WiFi and Bluetooth at will.

Providing a new alternative outside of the iOS/Android OS duopoly, the Librem 5’s isolation-based security-focused PureOS, upon shipment, in addition to the having the ability to integrate with both GNOME and Plasma Mobile, will offer basic communication services: phone, email, messaging, voice, camera, browsing, and will expand after shipment and over time to update with more free software applications, through shared collaboration with the developer community. Key to providing this in the Librem 5, Purism is partnering with open​ ​source​ ​communications​ ​project​ ​Matrix.org to enable end-to-end​ ​encrypted​, ​decentralized communication​ ​in​ the ​dialler​ ​and​ ​messaging​ ​app.

The crowdfunding campaign raised $100,000 in the first 100 hours and raised over $200,000 in each of the last three weeks, reaching $1 million in individual preorders, enterprise sales and community support with just under three weeks left to go.

News of the proposed phone has been met with enthusiasm and excitement for the hope of this new fully free/libre and open-source GNU/Linux phone hitting the market:

“Crossing $1 million in funding this early with the help of uniting many ethical communities and security-conscious parties has been really exciting,” says Todd Weaver, Founder and CEO, Purism. “We are on our way to the $1.5m goal allowing us to deliver a phone that finally frees us from the shackles of the Android and iOS smartphone duopoly.”

About Purism

Purism is a Social Purpose Corporation devoted to bringing security, privacy, software freedom, and digital independence to everyone’s personal computing experience.
With operations based in San Francisco (California) and around the world, Purism manufactures premium-quality laptops, tablets and phones, creating beautiful and powerful devices meant to protect users’ digital lives without requiring a compromise on ease of use. Purism designs and assembles its hardware in the United States, carefully selecting internationally sourced components to be privacy-respecting and fully Free-Software-compliant. Security and privacy-centric features come built-in with every product Purism makes, making security and privacy the simpler, logical choice for individuals and businesses.

The Librem 5 crowdfunding campaign is still cranking along nicely, while it is going on we wanted to provide a progress report on the hardware selection as well as the advancements with our existing development boards.

TL;DR:

The base hardware with i.MX 6 is demonstrably working.

i.MX 8M, Etnaviv, full HD, are the likely hardware combination candidates for the Librem 5 phone.

Development Hardware Proving Positive

Showing photos of low-level progress is always a challenge, however showing Wayland and applications running on development hardware by definition means that the lower level parts are working! Booting from microSD into a Debian GNU/Linux unstable with most of the UI installed…

Purism Librem 5 phone (early development boards) for testing CPU/GPU and GNU/LinuxPurism Librem 5 (early development boards) booting the Linux kernel, Wayland, and a terminal in early August 2017.Purism Librem 5 (early development boards) booting Debian GNU/Linux unstable, Wayland, and GNOME Settings in September 2017Purism Librem 5 (early development boards) screenshot of a photo rendered

What led us to choose i.MX 6/i.MX 8

We have tested nearly every combination of CPU (and GPU, see further below), Purism’s goals of creating hardware that is ethical, runs free software, can separate baseband from main CPU, and the ability to run GNU/Linux (not Android), quickly narrowed our scope to i.MX 6 as one of the only viable options.

We have been testing and working with i.MX 6 and are pleased to report healthy progress with that hardware, as you can see from the photos, we have the Linux kernel booting, Wayland running, and in these photos GNOME/GTK and even Gnome Settings showing.

Heading towards i.MX 8

We have been making some progress that makes us confident to say we will likely be able to use i.MX 8 for the Librem 5 phone hardware, primarily because:

We will be able to evaluate a i.MX 8M pre-production board November 2017

Our extended community can evaluate a handful of i.MX 8M sample chips in November 2017

More evaluation boards should be available before year-end 2017

In Q1 of 2018 we can get i.MX 8M into production. This is well ahead of our required hardware selection date of April 2018, so we will very likely be using the i.MX 8M in the Librem 5.

i.MX 8M (early evaluation boards)

State of the GPUs… or “Why we chose i.MX 6/8 + Vivante”

GPU drivers have been a big issue for a long time in the free software world. Manufacturers would typically not release any specification or documentation but only binary-only drivers. For PC hardware this problem has somewhat been resolved, which is why Purism uses Intel GPUs on our Librem products, since Intel has free drivers merged in mainline Linux kernel. But for ARM SOCs, the situation is not ideal.

MALI: One of the biggest players in the ARM field is MALI. The MALI core was originally developed by Falanx Microsystems until ARM bought their patents and copyrights and is now licensing the MALI core for ARM designs. ARM is not releasing any specs about the MALI GPU cores and does not provide any free software drivers for them. (The MALI400 is e.g. also used in the Allwinner A64 chip which again is used on Pine64 and in the Pinebook). There is an effort to develop a free driver by reverse engineering existing code, which is called LIMA, but its functionality and support is still limited.

Adreno: another big one is the Adreno GPU core, found in many Qualcomm Snapdragon SOCs. For this one also, no documentation exists although a reverse engineering project produced a pretty well working driver, called freedreno, which is also supported by current Mesa versions.

PowerVR: the PowerVR GPU cores are found mostly in embedded PowerPCs and Texas Instruments “OMAP” CPUs. As of today, we are not aware of any free development for these, only some binary-only drivers are available. There is an effort started by the Free Software Foundation but it seems that the project has stalled for some time now.

Tegra: the first generation nVIDIA “Tegra” SOCs has Linux kernel mainline support since 2012. The latest Tegra SOCs use the same GPU building blocks as the desktop PC graphics cards and can be used with the Nouveau GPU driver.

i.MX 6 Vivante: since Linux kernel 4.8, a new set of DRM/GPU drivers has been incorporated into the mainline Linux kernel, the so-called Etnaviv. Etnaviv support is also included in Mesa, starting with Mesa 17. We have successfully been operating a prototype for our phone using a mainline Linux kernel 4.12.4 with Etnaviv support. From microSD we booted into a Debian GNU/Linux unstable with most of the UI stuff installed. It works! We can safely say that upstream OpenGL hardware GPU support for i.MX 6 has landed in major Linux distributions, which is great news since hardware GUI acceleration is badly needed for any type of modern mobile GUI.

With the Librem 5, we are very excited to be advancing the mobile phone space to be ethical, respect digital rights, run GNU/Linux, be secure, and create a future that we are proud to be part of. We will be posting regular development updates as we progress with the hardware, software, and partners.

Crowdfunding support for GNOME Foundation and KDE backed security phone from Purism tops $900,000 with 3 weeks to go

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., October 2, 2017 — With overwhelming support from the Free/Libre, Open Source and GNU/Linux communities in addition to recent partnerships with KDE and the GNOME Foundation, Purism, the manufacturer that builds high-quality, top of the range and freedom-respecting devices, has surpassed the 50 percent mark of their $1.5 million goal in their current crowdfunding campaign which will allow the company to build the first fully free/libre and open source smartphone: the Librem 5.

Breaking away from the iOS/Android OS duopoly, the Librem 5’s isolation-based security-focused PureOS, upon shipment, will offer basic communication services: phone, email, messaging, voice, camera, browsing, and will expand after shipment and over time to update with more free software applications, through shared collaboration with the developer community (not “read-only open source”, but true free software collaboration). In addition to the ability to integrate with both GNOME and Plasma Mobile, the $599 Librem 5 will come equipped with hardware kill switches, a popular feature in Purism’s laptops, that allow for users to turn on and off the camera, microphone, WiFi and Bluetooth at will.

With just under four weeks to go, the crowdfunding campaign raised $100,000 in the first 100 hours and raised over $200,000 in each of the last two weeks, increasing their total to over $900,000 with just over 3 weeks left to go.

News of the proposed phone has been met with enthusiasm and excitement for the hope of this new fully free open-source Linux phone hitting the market:

“Getting endorsements for the Librem 5 hardware from both KDE and the GNOME Foundation took us a huge step towards creating a phone that frees us from the handcuffs of Android and iOS, and we hope this continues as we get closer to reaching our goal,” says Todd Weaver, Founder and CEO, Purism.

About Purism

Purism is a Social Purpose Corporation devoted to bringing security, privacy, software freedom, and digital independence to everyone’s personal computing experience.
With operations based in San Francisco (California) and around the world, Purism manufactures premium-quality laptops, tablets and phones, creating beautiful and powerful devices meant to protect users’ digital lives without requiring a compromise on ease of use. Purism designs and assembles its hardware in the United States, carefully selecting internationally sourced components to be privacy-respecting and fully Free-Software-compliant. Security and privacy-centric features come built-in with every product Purism makes, making security and privacy the simpler, logical choice for individuals and businesses.

Orinda, CA/San Francisco, September 19, 2017 – The GNOME Foundation has provided their endorsement and support of Purism’s efforts to build the Librem 5, which if successful will be the world’s first free and open smartphone with end-to-end encryption and enhanced user protections. The Librem 5 is a hardware platform the Foundation is interested in advancing as a GNOME/GTK phone device. The GNOME Foundation is committed to partnering with Purism to create hackfests, tools, emulators, and build awareness that surround moving GNOME/GTK onto the Librem 5 phone. Read more

You might have heard about our Librem 5 phone campaign that we recently launched and that has now crossed the $300,000 milestone. If you are reading this particular blog post, it is quite probably because you are a member of the great GNOME/KDE/freedesktop community, and if you were expecting the Librem 5 to be only “a GNOME phone” and exclusionary of others you will be happy to know that Purism is working with both KDE e.V. and the GNOME Foundation, and will continue to do so.

As a matter of fact, to the question “Will you be running GNOME, Plasma, or your own custom UI?”, our campaign page’s FAQ stated, from the beginning:

“We will be working with both GNOME/GTK and KDE/Plasma communities, and have partnered with the foundations behind them for the middleware layer. PureOS currently is GNOME-based and our great experience with working with GNOME as an upstream as well as GNOME’s OS and design-centric development model; however we will also test, support, and develop with KDE and the KDE community, and of course we will support Qt for application development. We will continue to test GNOME and Plasma, and should have a final direction within a month after funding success. Whatever is chosen, Purism will be working with both communities in an upstream-first fashion.”

As a point of clarification, Purism is supporting GNOME/GTK and will continue to do so; Purism is also supporting KDE/Plasma and will continue; forming partnerships with these great communities is a way to establish our long-term commitment to those goals.

Likewise, Purism will ship PureOS by default on the Librem 5, but will support and work with other GNU/Linux distributions wishing to take advantage of this device.

The Librem 5 is about users reclaiming their rights to freedom, privacy and security on their mobile communication devices (also known as pocket computer, smartphone, etc.) with a platform that they love and trust. It is not about creating walled gardens, erecting barriers and division in the free desktop community, and reigniting the Desktop Wars of the past:

We are planning to empower users to run both GNOME, KDE, or whatever they see fit, on their GNU+Linux phone—just like we can have both GNOME and KDE on the same desktop/laptop today. The fact that we are going to be making an integrated convenient product that may or may not be a vanilla or heavily modified version of one of these two desktops as the “official recommended turnkey product choice for customers” takes away nothing from the value of these environments or from the ability to run and tinker with whatever Free and Open-Source software you see fit on your device—a device that you can truly own.

What we are providing here is a reference platform that is not Android, for both GNOME and KDE communities—we just so happen to need to provide it as a turnkey usable product for less tech-savvy customers as well, while doing it 100% in the open, upstream-first, like a true Free Software project should be. Right now, the exact set of software technologies we will base our “integrated product” on—whether closely based on KDE, or GNOME—is something we are still evaluating and will decide along the way. There is no “us” vs “them” here. The two projects are in different states of advancement when it comes to mobile and touch technologies, and both communities have their specificities, expertise, and strengths. No matter which project we pick as the basis to invest most of our technical resources in, both projects will win:

Even if one project is not chosen as the reference product user interface, it gains a hardware reference platform that community members can standardize on, and thus improve itself however they see fit.

This is not the nineties. GNOME and KDE have had a healthy collaboration relationship for the better part of a decade now!

We light up a competitive fire again in the hearts of contributors in both communities—and beyond. We can now fight for a platform we truly own, from the backend and middleware to the graphical user interface. No more proprietary UIs, no more “fork everything in middleware!”

We will still provide support to developers and testers across the board, everybody is welcome.

From a higher perspective, we believe this campaign is vital to the relevance of Free Software and the viability of GNU+Linux (vs Android+Linux) beyond the desktop, and to protect ourselves from pervasive surveillance and data capitalism. We hope you will see it in this light as well.

On Thursday, we have revealed our plans to build the world’s first encrypted, free/libre and open platform smartphone that will empower users to protect their digital identity in an increasingly unsafe mobile world. This naturally comes after having announced the general availability and inventory of our Librem 13 and Librem 15 laptops in June this year. Our newest line of laptops are undergoing shipping after a short delay related to finishing our coreboot porting work (look forward to our technical update on this subject, to be published this Tuesday).

In preparation for the phone project, in addition to our regular work we have spent 18 months of R&D to test hardware specifications and engage with one of the largest phone fabricators, and have now reached the point where we are launching the crowdfunding campaign to gauge demand for the initial fabrication order and add the features most important to users.

Enabling the next generation of cable-cutters, we are making the Librem 5 the first ever Matrix-powered smartphone, natively using end-to-end encrypted decentralized communication in its dialer and messaging app. We will also offer regular baseband functionality separated off from the CPU, and work towards the goal of freeing all components.

As increasing concern among Android and iOS users grow around personal data they give up through WiFi connections, application installations and basic location services, we hope to address those concerns by manufacturing phones that will operate with free/libre and open source software within the kernel, the operating system, and all software applications. We have built our reputation within the GNU/Linux community on creating laptops designed to specifically meet user concern about digital privacy, security, and software freedom.

Starting at $599—less than the cost of many popular smartphones—and featuring a bona fide GNU/Linux operating system (PureOS) instead of Android or iOS, the Librem 5 is intended to give users unprecedented control and security with features unavailable on any other mainstream smartphone, including:

Make encrypted calls that mask your phone number

Encrypt texts and emails

Set up VPN services for enhanced web browsing protection

Use the phone on any 2G/3G/4G, GSM, UMTS, or LTE network

Edit or develop on the source code, which will be made publicly available, as a community-oriented FLOSS project (not “read-only open-source”)

Run PureOS or most modern GNU+Linux distributions—not yet another Android-based phone!

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., August 24, 2017 — Purism, the social purpose corporation which designs and produces popular privacy conscious hardware and software, has revealed its plans to build the world’s first encrypted, open platform smartphone that will empower users to protect their digital identity in an increasingly unsafe mobile world. After 18 months of R&D to test hardware specifications and engage with one of the largest phone fabricators, Purism is opening a self-hosted crowdfunding campaign to gauge demand for the initial fabrication order and add the features most important to users.

The plans to build the Librem 5 smartphone come on the tails of Purism opening general availability and inventory for its increasingly popular Librem laptop line in June 2017, which includes the Librem 13 and Librem 15 laptop models and has seen 35 percent average monthly growth in the past year.

Partnering with open source communications project Matrix, Purism is making the Librem 5 the first ever Matrix-powered smartphone, natively using end-to-end encrypted decentralized communication in its dialer and messaging app. Matrix is an open ecosystem for interoperable encrypted communication, supporting a rapidly growing community of over 2 million users for VoIP and Slack-style messaging.

As increasing concern among Android and iOS users grow around personal data they give up through WiFi connections, application installations and basic location services, Purism hopes to address those concerns by manufacturing phones that will operate with free/libre and open source software within the kernel, the operating system, and all software applications. Purism has built a strong reputation within the GNU/Linux community by delivering laptops designed to specifically meet user concern about digital privacy, chip-by-chip, line-by-line, to respect our common rights to privacy, security, and freedom.

Starting at $599—less than the cost of many popular smartphones—the Librem 5 will give users unprecedented control and security with features unavailable on any other mainstream smartphone, including:

Make encrypted calls that mask your phone number

Encrypt texts and emails

Set up VPN services for enhanced web browsing protection

Use the phone on any 2G/3G/4G, GSM, UMTS, or LTE network

Edit or develop on the source code, which will be made publicly available

“I believe digital rights should mirror physical rights. Our Librem 5 phone will get humanity closer to that goal by giving people choices about how they want to protect or share their digital identity,” said Todd Weaver, founder & CEO at Purism.

“Purism has been doing genuine and important work around making truly free yet desirable laptops. The communities I work with would very much like to see the same philosophy replicated in a phone that runs a GNOME based stack where community members can participate in equal terms and that ensures respect for the users’ privacy and security,” said Alberto Ruiz, GNOME & Fedora Laptop Enablement. “While pulling this off is hard, Todd seems like someone who sincerely cares about these issues and has a great track record executing. I think the efforts of Purism deserve the support of the free software community.”

A veteran of successful crowdfunding campaigns with more than $2.5 million raised over the past two years, Purism is self-hosting the Librem 5 crowdfunding effort on their web site. Users can back the project here: https://puri.sm/shop/librem-5

About Purism

Purism is a Social Purpose Corporation devoted to bringing security, privacy, software freedom, and digital independence to everyone’s personal computing experience.
With operations based in San Francisco (California) and around the world, Purism manufactures premium-quality laptops, tablets and phones, creating beautiful and powerful devices meant to protect users’ digital lives without requiring a compromise on ease of use. Purism designs and assembles its hardware in the United States, carefully selecting internationally sourced components to be privacy-respecting and fully Free-Software-compliant. Security and privacy-centric features come built-in with every product Purism makes, making security and privacy the simpler, logical choice for individuals and businesses.